Beet Ravioli for Valentine's Day

Plus: A Rice Cooker Gaffe, Our New Table, and Links.

Hey Thursday friends,

I’m not normally one of those food people who looks at an upcoming holiday and thinks to myself, “Oooh how can I capitalize on this for personal gain?”

But then my friend Justin was coming over for dinner last night (Craig’s on the east coast for the next few months!) and I thought: hey, maybe it’d be fun to test a Valentine’s Day recipe on him and then I can post it in my Thursday newsletter for personal gain! But not a corny Valentine’s Day recipe like a chocolate bon bon cake with candy hearts or whatever. I had a vision for this: BEET RAVIOLI.

I’m sure I’m not the first food person to write about beet ravioli for Valentine’s Day — don’t Google it! — but it’s kind of the perfect thing because: (a) it has the right colors; (b) it looks like a little gift; and (c) if you have a heart-shaped ravioli cutter, you can turn it into little hearts.

The thing about making ravioli is that it seems very daunting, but if you have the right tools, it’s really not. For this particular recipe, you’ll need three tools which, admittedly, all of you might not have (but there are workarounds): a food processor (for making the pasta dough and the filling), a pasta roller, and a ravioli stamper.

Don’t worry: if you don’t have a food processor, you can make the pasta dough without one (just pile up the flour, make a volcano like hole, and crack the eggs into it, like the Italians do, then work it in with a fork, and knead). If you don’t have a pasta rolling attachment for your KitchenAid, use a hand-cranking model. And if you don't have a ravioli stamper (I bought a set on Amazon for like $16), you can use a knife.

Let me walk you through the recipe.

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The Recipe: Beet Ravioli with Ricotta and Poppyseeds

The main thing to know about making your own ravioli is that it’s a series of sequences. There’s the sequence where you make the pasta dough (a cinch in the food processor: just some flour, eggs, salt, and a splash of olive oil).

There’s the sequence where you make the filling… in this case, I microwaved (!!) the beets because my oven’s out of commission. Honestly, it’s a revelation: you just clean the beets, stab them in a few spots to let out steam, wrap them in parchment paper, put them in a microwave safe bowl, and nuke on high for 12 minutes until a knife goes through easily.